Tips
Survival *As soon as you can, get a torch. It expands your field of vision once lit, and never goes out. Sold at general vendors, found in dungeons. *Get a stethoscope. Once used on each party member, even temporary escort quest party members, you will be able to watch its health. Even if the stethoscope is dropped or the pet is killed, the effect will remain. Sold at general vendors, found in dungeons. *Likewise a single leash can be used for all your party members. It will teleport them to your side if you are separated, even if the separation is caused by your teleportation. Even if the leash is dropped or the pet is killed, the effect will remain. Sold at general vendors, found in dungeons. *If you find adventuring too difficult by yourself (and possibly your starting pet from Vernis), go to Derphy and buy "slaves". You can have one party member, plus one more for every 5 Charisma you have. Juere infantry start at level 7 and can equip any leftover equipment you can use, so they make great companions at the beginning. They become available around level 5. **The Yerles Machine Infantry are also an excellent choice, having a great firearms skill to start all you have to do is supply them with a decent shotgun or laser gun. *If you see an item made of "vindale" material, it protects you from Etherwind. It may be worth getting, although it will be expensive. **It is rumored that this only protects from the initial disease effects, and if you stay in the wind long enough you may still develop symptoms months later. **According to the introductory cutscene, your character was caught in an ether storm on the way to North Tyris, and thus begins play already infected with the ether disease. Vindale materials simply prevent the Etherwind from speeding up your ether disease. *Being a high level has almost no benefits for almost every race other than mutant. The higher your Constitution, Will and Learning are, the more health, MP, and skill points you receive each level. So taking longer to level means more time to raise those stats. Also when you enter the wildness on the world map the monster their are based on your level. *Be sure to give good equipment to your allies and pets, since it will make them more effective in battle. *Make sure you carefully identify everything, and avoid wearing cursed equipment. Some unlucky items may cause regular misfortune like thievery and blood loss, even if their curse is removed. E'x'amine lists these permanent negative effects highlighted in red, along with the item's other positive stats. *Weather can be dangerous; heavy storms can cause you to get briefly blinded, confused, or lost, delaying your travels, while the Etherwind is an unnatural wind that can cause those caught in it to mutate dangerously. To escape dangerous weather, you can ask innkeepers for shelter, hide in a dungeon, or stay in your own home. **Note that only Etherwind is dangerous while on the local map, but you might wish to visit the innkeeper's shelter anyway just because it will have a textbook and training machine. ***Immunity to confusion or blindness does not seem to be effective on the world map - this may be a bug. *Keep any godly item you get unless it has bad negatives. When you find one that's really good modifier-wise, keep it even if the material sucks. Godly items have names surrounded by {curly brackets} *If you attack and kill a fellow adventurer, they will become your rival/foe. Any time you are in the same town, they will come after you immediately with new equipment and probably at a higher level. In some cases, this may be beneficial or even add an extra element of surprise and fun in towns, but be sure not to make too many enemies. *If your pets and allies fall in combat, bartenders in town can bring them back. *If using wizard mode, aka debug, the game may become stuck. *Take one of the direct damage feats (poison touch, fire breath etc.). They never miss, and thus make it easy to kill low hp hard to hit enemies, like quicklings. Money Making *Complete the main quest, at least up to the delivery of the letter to the King. This will give you a good initial amount of money to have for equipping your character and starting it off. *Prostituting yourself is an extremely easy way to make money. Buy cheap alcohol from innkeepers then give to an npc (preferably a store owner with plenty of money) then interact with them and choose the "interested in a little tail t'night?" option. with around 25 charisma you should net about 2k at the cost of -1 karma and a few turns. A side bonus is the hilarious praise the npcs will give you if you are "good" and an increase in your relationship with that npc (5~10 impress). Note that you will get tired from sexing too much and must rest to recover stamina. *Oracle scrolls generally sell for upwards of 2000 gold pieces and spawn approximately 1 in 3 times on dungeon generation, extremely lucrative for any beginner! *A ranch near Derphy can be highly profitable, as long as you have enough charisma to have one breeder and a number of empty companion slots. Any creature at the ranch can join your party, then be sold in Derphy for cash. **A ranch and a farm go well together. You can carry meat around until it rots. If you worship Kumiromi, you may get seeds from the rotten meat. You can plant the seeds at the farm, and you can dry out the rotten meat at the ranch to make jerky for rations. *Cargos of traveler's rations are the cheapest way to buy food. However, they cannot be used or dropped in a dungeon, but they count as cargo and thus go to your cart, so they don't weigh you down while you're trying to carry loot. You should always have some for overland travel at least as a beginner; you will eat them automatically as you move on the map. Their price increases slowly over time, so it may be a good idea to buy all that you can at the start and just stack the mess outta them. **However, the wilderness is always full of api nuts, healthy leaves, and edible wild plants, and those first two are very light and won't rot, so you may quickly find you don't need cargoes of food anymore, especially if you have a portable cooking tool and Cooking or are of the Yerles or Juere races. **Cooking other food (such as the fruit from the trees) will make it so it doesn't rot as fast and make it more filling so if you cook a couple things before you leave for a dungeon and eat those before you eat your non perishables it will make it so you don't need to spend an hour stocking up on api nuts and healthy leaves *The easiest way to earn money early on is through delivery quests across the world map; you can get them from the billboards in town or by talking to individual citizens. Remember to check the days left on a delivery or escort quest before you take it, since there may be fewer days left in the quest than it would take to complete it. **Birthday quests are also quite nice, and can be done easily while doing deliveries and escorts. Just wait until they have a request for one of the more 'useless' rods like magic arrow. A meager investment of about 3-6 weight can save you a lot of time and bring in a nice profit. Also keep on hand rarer kinds of 'junk' items such as skeletons, lots of bottles, empty bowls, bowls, washings, fire wood, and straw. When the quest comes up on the bulletin board, simply warp over and hand the needed item over. If you have trouble getting more bottles, hang around people that drink a lot, when drunkenness ends they sometimes drop them. Most other kinds of junk are common occurrences on the wilderness local map. You may also wish to drag snowmen around or store them in a storehouse when near Kapul/Derphy/Vernis to save on transportation time. ***If identifying items is too expensive for you, join the Fighter's Guild in Port Kapul, the Thief's Guild in Derphy, or the Wizard Guild in Lumiest, prices will be slashed in half. You'll likely not have much problem with that by the time you can join a guild, especially if you have Negotiation (which is highly recommended), but there's no benefit to being part of no guild anyway, except that before joining a guild and after hiring a maid, all 3 guilds' trainers may visit, whereas afterward only your guild's trainer will. *When you clear lower lvl dungeons, don't open the bejeweled chests you get for beating it. Instead, just pick it up and take it to a higher lvl dungeon and then open it. The rewards will be better. This works the same for safes and such, but safes weigh 300, so I wouldn't try moving that around. *Keep hold of any potions of poison that you find. Throwing them at Silver or Gold bells results in an easy kill due to their huge speed; Silver bells drop platinum coins and small medals, and Gold bells drop large amounts of gold. This will also work on quicklings, though you may also use molotovs and sulfuric acids as they are prone to stand still and pepper you with arrows instead of running around. *You will on very rare occasion find material kits. Any item you use them on will change to the material specified. Do not ever waste these kits on normal items (especially furniture) they are very rare and they are the ONLY way to reforge Godly quality items. And you will want to be able to reforge it to a stronger material. Kits can, on rare occasion, be purchased from the exotic dealer in Larna, but at rather massive prices. *Easiest and earliest source of Potions of Cure Corruption (to cure Ether Disease, or trade with adventurers) is from Casino. The first time you visit you will get 10 free casino chips to play with. It's one of the prize items when you play Blackjack, but you will need to win most of the rounds to get one. Get as much luck as you can, as it affects what cards you will be dealt. A high dex will also make it so you can cheat. However, it is only recommended to cheat during the first few rounds. The casino may award the potions after 4 wins, and almost definitely will after 5. *While you don't directly get gold from this, trading cargo goods from the trader is an excellent way to raise your negotiation which will allow you to sell items at a much higher price if it is high enough. *If you have a rod of teleportation and a fairly decent Performer stat (by which I mean anything above 23 or so), you can make some decent money off of the pubgoers in Vernis. After zapping Loyter with the rod, you can go over to the piano and start playing. If all goes well (which it should), you can make about 1-3k gold per performance; it's very possible to get 7k gold per trip, which easily makes it worth one charge of a teleportation rod. Also, if you want, you can kill the bard afterwards; if you're lucky, you can get a bit more gold off of him. Items *If you find yourself running out of spells, the Puppy Cave is a great place to find lots of spellbooks. The levels regenerate each time you go up or down stairs in the Puppy Cave, so you can get a steady supply of spellbooks (and possibly other things) there. *Safe places to store items: Your home, ranches, farms, and museums, and static dungeons such as the Ancient Castle and Pyramid (as long as you can beat the monsters inside!). **The Robber's Den in Vernis, the Cat House in Yowyn, the Basement in Vernis, and the Sewers in Lumiest can all be used as storehouses after the monsters are cleared out. **Items in normal, randomly-generated dungeons (King's Dungeon, Safe Dungeon, etc.) will be there when you return, but these such dungeons occasionally disappear and be replaced with new ones. Unlucky adventurers may lose a stash if this happens while they're away. *Bad places to store items: Items in random dungeons, most notably the Puppy Cave, will be lost forever if you leave the floor that you're on. **Items in towns will be cleaned up occasionally, so don't ever leave anything you want lying around. ***Items you want to keep should also never be kept in shops, as they will likely be sold. ***Inversion: Cargo items and furniture may be stored in the shop, as they will never be sold. Other *An easy way to raise stats is to get gardening (from the trainer in yown) and then do "The harvest time" quest because while you are pulling up the fruit and veg, you are training str, con, ler, and wil as well as gardening and you also get some PP, gold, and magical goods. *Pets do not seem to eat food off the ground if stacked with other items. Keep your nuts and cookies and leaves safe by using your non-rotting food storage space as your rod/potion/scroll storage spot as well. *Never give your pets engagement items. Your pet will keep them forever and it will lower impress massively if you try to take them away (the pet also eats it). Meanwhile they just take up space in the pet's inventory. Use love potions if you want to increase pet impress, not engagement jewelry. *Read your in-game help by pressing ?, and read certain books with red covers found lying around (especially the "Beginner's Guide" in your starting home) for various helpful information. *Never read a spellbook in town or in your home. Monsters may spawn from an unsuccessful reading. If you leave, they will remain, and if you forget they're there, you may not be able to re-enter the location until you're more powerful. More importantly, the monsters you summon may be able to breathe fire breath and cause your house and possessions to burn. Read spellbooks on the border of an outdoor area, so you can make an easy getaway if monsters spawn. The absolute safest place to read books is the arena, after you've won. Here, you can stand on the steps to make a quick escape, and there's no nasty surprise monsters waiting to kill you. You can fight resulting monsters with no worry of death penalties (you don't even get an arena loss), and you can hang around as long as you like. The arena completely resets on each fight, so you can also spam wall creation all around the stairs if you're paranoid (watch out for teleports!). *Another good place to read books is in a Shelter. The area is enclosed so you wont teleport far and you can mop up weak enemies that may be summoned easily, and if you want to run from a fight you can simply go up the stairs, pick up and redeploy the shelter and continue reading. *The monsters summoned via spellbook malfunction can be much stronger than you; this also means they are capable of slaying NPCs you cannot. Grab those hard-to-read books and summon a few dragons near that guild watchman/fellow adventurer/special NPC, teleport away, and come back later once the guards are done to grab the poor fellow's equipments/figurine/card. The kill does not even count against you since it's just an accident... right? *Exercise extreme caution when using spellbook malfunction to kill NPCs. Guards are not always successful in killing the monsters, and if aliens, summoners (i.e. King chess piece, Believer of Fire or Liches), or splitters (especially mass monster) are created, the town could be rendered unusable for a very long time. **Working on that note, get as fast as possible, boost your stats pretty high, and then read until you summon a nether dragon in Palmia, then always keep a rod of teleportation handy to fling it away. NOBODY will ever beat the damned thing one on one. It's the only thing I've seen kill everyone in the whole damn town, normally when the king, queen, and general tag-team any other monster they'll slay it. It took them 6 tries before they finally killed it, by that time my museum was quite beneficially upgraded for their efforts, as well as my shop. They seem to have decent elemental resistance, perhaps they just spawn with the right items, for they have slain all other dragons on the first try. **Moongates aren't very worthwhile until you have you have Lock Picking, a rod of teleportation, lots of nuts and other nonperishables, and a very very high bonus to hit/DV, we're talking 40+ total. There are two stat-boosting moongates which require these. In one, there is nothing on the level but locked doors. In the other, there is nothing on the vast empty plain but legions of very high leveled bubbles. Zap yourself away or read a scroll of teleportation, then make your way into the corner. Then sit and fight, and run away whenever you get too wounded. Bubbles don't hit for much damage, but they're hard to penetrate and hit, and they mob you. Each kill at level 3 gives you roughly 4k experience, their body parts sell for approximately 1k apiece, and there's a pretty good chance the items they drop will be Great or better. Due to the hideous amount of bubbles, if you need to retreat you may need to zap them away in order to claim the booty before making a run for it. In either case, your biggest threat is simply running out of food before you make any headway. You can also bring scrolls of inferior material and some cloth or paper hats for emergency rations, though it's not guaranteed. ***The game is saved before you are thrown through the moongate, so you can enter with a peace of mind; if you find yourself staring down a wave of monstrosity, just quit the game (you cannot save inside a player-created area) and restore. *New skills can be learned and your learning rate at existing ones improved by paying platinum coins to trainers in town. Platinum is earned by completing quests. *Once you hire a maid - you can probably afford one very quickly and should probably get one - always have at least 4 platinum coins on hand before you return home. Guild trainers may visit, and they will boost the potential of one of your attribute in exchange for them *You earn regular pay based on your various titles, earned for things like arena fights and your house. You can collect it from the chest in your home. **You will also receive items, ranging from food to artifacts. *Monthly taxes are paid at the Embassy north of Palmia. **The tax box you get from trading medals at Miral and Garok's workshop also serves the same purpose as the one in the Embassy. *You can review your current quests, the time remaining on them, your titles, your pay and taxes and so forth in your 'j'ournal. *Potions that reverse the effects of the etherwind exist, but they are quite valuable and rare if you suck at blackjack. If you don't suck at blackjack or avoiding the wind (possible on first 10 days of months 3, 6, 9, and 12 - remember that!) then you can trade potions of cure corruption with fellow adventurers early on for good equipment. *Better tools give you better results for your skills. Better beds give you better dreams if you sleep in them. *Don't buy a shop for your first building. Its maintenance cost is 5,000 gold/month! You won't see a profit for months or years while you wait for the shop to gain ranks. Instead, start with a museum or a cozy house. Museums have a maintenance cost of 1,500 gold/month, and they start making a profit at rank 84 - which you can quickly reach just by saving the figures and cards monsters drop, though you could also murder NPCs a lot if you don't care about karma. Cozy houses have a maintenance cost of 800 gold/month, but they start out at rank 84, so they make an initial profit of 160 gold/month, and all the furniture in your starting cave gets moved to it when you build it, so you can gain more ranks by rearranging your furniture. **A very nice starting strategy, dependent upon your earning potential, seems to be shooting for a museum first, shop second. In this way all those figures and cards will start earning you money right away (I usually go for being near Yowyn, as each time you pass through you can shoot down Gwen again), while you throw useless equipment into the town dungeons. Upon selecting a location, get the poison escort quest towards its location, maybe a couple light "Give a gift/waste collection" quests, drop all but your essentials, pick up the useless equipment, making sure you have about 6000 to expand once you've set up, and you'll get your month paid for, along with adding to the store's ranking by the time you swing back again with the next load. By the time you've finished all your trips offloading items gained from random encounters, quests, and random dungeons, you should have enough from the sidework to get at least a cozy house as well. Once the museum is placed it should only be about 4-5 months between that and the shop, with about one more for the house upgrade. You could also skip to Estate or Cyberhouse and just keep working on your cave in the meantime, maybe get mining and break the place to bits, leaving all the diamonds behind until you have 10 items to outclass diamond ore value. --Leo Krupps 09:38, 11 April 2009 (UTC) *Furniture will not improve your property's rank if it is stacked with other items. If you buy new property, remember to rearrange your furniture so each item is on its own tile. If you run a museum, figures and cards provide no value if stacked. *If you run a shop, stacked items can be sold. *Fountains have long term benefits as well as disadvantages. While they can give negative as well as positive mutations, they can also improve your characters potential for attributes. As well, on a rare occasion they grant wishes, which makes them extremely valuable. Just make sure you know what you are wishing for. If the pet manages to get a wish by drinking from a fountain/well, it will be considered yours. **For fountains, pets that fall in will float back up unharmed ("tested" with little girl). For wells, pets that fall in die, unless they are floating. Despite the text, there is currently no way to save pets that fall in; you'll just have to get the bartender to revive them. In general it's just a good idea to drain wells before your pets get to them. ***On the subject of wells, do NOT waste the holy well in Noyel on bottles of water (which you get by mixng an empty bottle with it.) bottles of water can be obtained at Miral and Garok's workshop for just 3 medals, which can be replaced; but the holy well, which cannot be recharged like ordinary wells, will boost the potential of one of your attributes each time it is drank from. ****If you are immediately adjacent to the pet when they fall in, they will grab for your hand. Still not a guaranteed save, however. *As of version 1.13, fame plays a huge part in the difficulty of jobs and random encounters. Ask the Informer in town for a list of adventurers. In the list you can see their level and fame compared to yours. If you have too much fame for your level, your life would be pretty hard. You can deliberately drop your fame by failing jobs like "Hunting", "The harvest time", "I want it!", "Party time!", "Birthday". You won't get a karma penalty for these. Eventually you'll probably want to have at least 50000 fame so you can do certain quests, though. **Also, if you have a moderate amount of Performer skill, you can make money AND lose Fame at the same time, along with possibly boosting your Performer skill. *Remember you can trade with adventurers, and with regular NPCs if they're the object of an "I want it!" quest! Its a good way to obtain artifacts by exchanging scrolls of wonder, oracle, potions of corruption and other valuable items. It is recommended that you trade a light item so that you can steal it back afterwards. **If you have good pickpocketing skills and the NPC is in an area all by himself, you can trade him expensive jewelry/equipment you wish to sell then steal it back easily, thus making the thief guild quests even easier. *Rod of Alchemy is a very useful item. It can change an opened material box into a safe, a safe/chest into a material box or a junkstone into ore. Rod of Alchemy with quite a few charges can be a good source of money, gems, materials and small medals. It can also be used to make the tutorial chest in your house into a lighter item in order to remove it. **The Gem of Mani is basically an infinitely reusable rod of alchemy with a time restriction; keep a container-type item around it (chest/bejeweled chest/treasure ball/safe) and use the gem on the container every chance you get. The container will metamorph into a new, item-filled container, even if it was empty before. ***Note that if you have opened a wallet or a suitcase, it will not turn into a wallet or suitcase, but one of these instead. *Do not kill any beggars until you see by using a scroll of oracle that one is holding a dirty pendent. If you kill them then the only way to get The Begger's Pendant is to wait for the beggars to respawn or otherwise, kill all beggars at the party quest which is also possible given enough time and patience. **You can use an scroll of oracle at the start of Party Time! missions to see if any artifact were created in that party. There are at least 4 artifacts that can be created in those missions. *Items with "It protects you from thieves." like The Begger's Pendant only guards your gold from Thief and its variants, and from the random events that steal your gold. It does not protect you from Fairies, another type of monster that can steal gold. *If you're planning to join the thieves' guild, there is a difficult stunt you can do. The first time you can go into the guild, bring a rod of make door with at least 6 charges (or know the spell) and two rods of teleportation with 10+ charges. If you can handle killing the thief guild members you can get by with less. However, note that if the thief guild members are killed they spawn in about a day at their original positions and might accidentally discover you when you try to take something heavy. Depending on the quality of goods below you can get up to 3 ranks by stealing everything and selling it to the shopkeepers there. Bring lots of leaf/imo/api nut foods to eat, as you cannot go up without everyone returning to their original positions. You'll also get about 17 levels of pickpocket. About 40-45 strength will get everything depending on item modifiers. Note that you can't steal the iron maidens. *If you're having a hard time finding a good instrument, remember that instruments count as furniture and there are 2 furniture shops in the embassy. If you have or plan to get the Performer skill, investing in these shops would be a good idea. **After you obtain an instrument of high quality, use a scroll to change its material. The higher the selling price of an instrument the better it is. Watch out though, changing the material also changes the weight of the instrument, for example a platinumwork panflute weighs over 60s. Spirit Cloth is a great material to aim for since it is high quality and very lightweight, a spirit cloth panflute weighs 12s. *Dumping raw emerald and diamond ore in your shack is a cheap way to make it climb ranks (better salary) when you're too poor to afford furniture. *Flying scrolls are your friend they can be used to lower the weight of objects there used on making it much easier to carry things like water tubes (300.0s) Bold text